Comparisons
by crazyreader11
Summary: Sam overhears Danny compare her to Paulina with Tucker after school one day. Well, sort of. Danny and Tuck may not have known she was listening. She might have been hiding behind a tree. And maybe she didn't stick around for too long...
**O MY GOODNESS.**

 **It's been forever since I've posted anything on this sight. So much has been happening but I've finally found some time to write. I'm working on a request but I really wanted to post something to assure you all that I haven't gone away.**

 **Danny Phantom belongs to Butch Hartman, as always.**

 **Now that that's out of the way, I hope you enjoy this one-shot!**

Sam was feeling good about herself.

She'd woken up before her parents had the chance to sneak into her room, lecture her about her wardrobe, or drown her vision in sunlight. She'd also eaten a wonderful breakfast and even had a little extra time to study her notes for a chemistry exam before her boys—Danny and Tucker—came and picked her up on their way to school.

Her day only improved as Casper's bullies hadn't been in the mood to beat up her friends and she'd totally owned Paulina in an oral cat fight in the courtyard. She was assured she passed her exams—the three page chemistry packet and the surprise quiz in French—and dared to hope for perfect scores. Her salad at lunch had the freshest fruit she'd ever tasted in which even Tucker yielded to its sweet nature, and Danny had hugged her that afternoon.

Ah, Danny.

As Sam finished up at her locker and headed on her non-Gothic-merrily way to meet Danny and Tucker over the hill in the back of Casper High, she began to wonder if she should tell Danny today. She'd been having an excellent day as though karma itself was trying to tell her this day was her day to shine. As a Goth, she definitely didn't shine often so perhaps she should take advantage of this opportunity.

Yes, she would. She will tell Danny that she wants to be more than friends with him and if he doesn't feel the same way they'll talk it out and continue with their friendship. Everything would be fine, if not eventually. Why hadn't she thought of this before? She'd always been so afraid but there was nothing to be afraid of with a guy as nice and sweet as Danny. Smiling at her optimistic thoughts Sam began to jog to her meeting point. She had all this energy from feeling so alive today!

…Until she heard Danny tell Tucker, "Dude, there is no comparison between Paulina and Sam. Like, c'mon, isn't it obvious?" He sounded upset and irked, probably from receiving too much teasing from Tucker in too little an amount of time. Therefore at first Sam stopped to give him time to calm down or Tucker to apologize, but as Danny continued to talk decided she wanted to hear more. If she was to come walking up to them now they would cease their line of conversation. So, even though it went against her ideals of spying and privacy, Sam chose to hide behind the tree line of the few planted Evergreens around and listened in with a curious heart.

"Explain it to me," Tucker urged as he set his beloved PDA into one of his many pockets sewn into his cargo pants. This must be important for him to ignore his technology and Sam almost felt guilty for eavesdropping, but her heart cried out at wanting to know what Danny was talking about.

She almost cried for real when he replied, "Well, Paulina, for starts, is Ms. Popular and cheer captain. She's probably the prettiest girl in school and she'll use her father's wealth to ensure whatever future she wants. She gets guys to do her homework so she can maintain her flawless skin and from what I've heard, she gets around and not just with her many, many boyfriends. And as far as being girly is concerned, no one is more of a stereotypical girl than she is considering she wears pink all the time and takes care of her nails like some guys do with their cars. She cares about the way she looks more than anything else and how she's presented to society." As if Danny hadn't crushed her heart enough he had to conclude with, "She's every teenage boy's fantasy."

Sam almost choked on her own saliva as Danny listed off everything that was that shallow witch. The world around her grew fuzzy as she struggled to breather and she had to grasp a low hanging tree branch to keep from falling with her new-found lack of balance. Did Danny really think so lowly of her if he thought she was 'no comparison' to Ms. Perfect Paulina?

Through her haze she heard Tucker reply but she couldn't make left or right of it as she struggled to control her breathing and ignore her racing thoughts. However, she did hear Tucker ask at some point, "And what about Sam?"

O no, she could _not_ stand here and listen to the love of her young life list all her flaws in comparison to Preppy Paulina. They were seniors meaning, at the age of eighteen, Sam knew her flaws all too well. She was continually confronted with them through their past four years of high school. She didn't need them thrown back in her face by her best friend, even if Danny didn't know she could hear everything.

"Sam…" Danny sighed, but the girl in question didn't stick around to hear him speak so lowly of her. She simply walked down the opposite side of the hill until she passed Casper High. Only then did she take off in a dead sprint with no real intention of where she wanted to go. She just knew she needed to run and she didn't want to be anywhere that reminded her of Danny. But GOD DAMNIT, _everything_ reminded her of Danny. She was pathetic. And tired. And something wet was trailing down her face. Looking up she expected to see rain clouds and almost laughed at herself when she saw the sun gleam down and heard herself sob. The sky wasn't crying; she was.

After dashing around town for what seemed like hours, Sam decided the best place for her to cope would be the alley behind the Nasty Burger. No one went back there, not even the employees except on trash day. She only knew about it because Danny often ran out here to change forms when a ghost attacked, but other than that she didn't have any memories of being with Danny right there. So she settled against the cold brick wall at the end of the alley, shadowed from the sun's warm rays, and huddled into herself as she sunk to the ground. She just wanted to get herself together so she could go home and lock herself away for the weekend to recover from the worst day of her life.

Sadly, it seemed the other end of karma's luck decided she wouldn't be aloud that peace as her cell phone burst with music, both Danny and Tucker's ringtones followed closely behind by her mother, father, and even Jazz's after she purposefully ignored their calls. Yet it seemed they wouldn't give up so after a half hour of listening to annoying ringing when all she wanted to do was cry in peace and quiet, Sam chucked her phone at the brick wall to her left and successfully broke it. Then, exhausted from the stress she thought she'd relieved herself of, Sam let her head fall back to examine the twilight the sky had taken on and accidentally cried herself to sleep, her last wandering thought wondering when the sun had set.

When she awoke the first time she felt cold as the wind licked her bare arms while the temperature continued to drop. Though it was officially the start of spring time in Amity Park, they were in Michigan which meant below freezing nights for the next few weeks. Though she didn't have much energy to stay awake or considering moving to head home, she didn't fall back asleep until she felt numb, now physically as well as mentally. O how she wished her emotions would follow suit.

The second time she woke she still felt cold, only this cold seemed to heat her body as it wrapped around her like a blanket. She tried to move away, to open her eyes and see, to stretch her body, but the cold instead held on tighter. She struggled slightly until she decided she didn't care anymore and slipped back into unconscious.

The third and final time she awoke she felt her Egyptian cotton sheets slide along her bare arms and legs, keeping her warm. Popping her eyes open she wondered if it had all been a dream—a nightmare—and her alarm would sound at any minute. Shifting onto her side from her back though led her to seeing who else occupied her room. Danny sat hanging from a chair on her left, closest to where she'd been lying with his upper body supported by her bed as his head lay about where her knees rested. Tucker lay curled into a tight ball in another chair near her feet. Evidence that her parents had been there as well showed from the tie and white gloves hanging over the foot rail of her California King. How long had she been out?

As she sat up to try locating her extra phone—just a burner cell in case something were to happen with a ghost attack or whatnot—she accidentally knocked over her clock without having fast enough reflexes nor long enough arms to catch it in time. Frozen at the noise it made upon connecting harshly with her floor, Sam could only whip her head around to find both boys now wide awake and alert. Wide eyed herself, she waited for them to realize she'd woken up and cringed when they lunged at her with bear hugs in mind.

"Sam! You're okay!"

"We've been so worried!"

"What happened to you?"

"How are you feeling?"

"How did you end up behind the Nasty Burger?"

"Why didn't you meet us after school?"

"Um…" came her intelligent response as she wondered what to say. How exactly do you tell your two best friends you ended up running away from spying on a conversation that broke her heart because it became painfully aware to her during her eavesdropping that one of said best friends could never love her like she did him? "It's complicated?"

Wrong answer. Or, question? "You're shitting me," Danny stated as his gleeful yet worried expression turned sour into a blank stare quickly followed by hurt and anger. " _Un_ complicate it then."

Even Tucker seemed a little ticked at her lack of information as he added, "You can't just expect us to drop this after finding you on the brink of freezing to death."

"Well, maybe I don't want to talk about it," Sam replied through gritted teeth as she crossed her arms.

"Fine, then I'll talk and you can listen," Danny began. "We thought you were taken hostage or missing when you didn't meet us after school and when Tuck and I found out you weren't at home we freaked out even more. You were ignoring calls so even though that annoyed us to no end at least we knew you were alive. But then—"

"O would you shut up Danny?! You've done enough talking today and I don't want to listen anymore!" Sam exploded as her fists flew into the air above her. Who did he think he was, anyway? He wasn't her father. He definitely wasn't her boyfriend.

As the duo continued to argue—what with Sam not wanting to listen to Danny and Danny trying to talk back to her anyways—Tucker decided to take a step back and think about what had been said so far. What had Sam meant by 'enough talking' already? Danny had barely said three sentences and with their busy schedules they'd barely seen each other all day.

But then it clicked with him so he hurried himself to dig out his PDA, find and select the appropriate file, and click the play button for the recording after turning the volume up as high as it could go.

 _"Explain it to me,"_ Tucker's voice interrupted their argument. At first the two didn't understand what was happening, but as the recording progressed their faces each paled considerably.

 _"Well, Paulina, for starts, is Ms. Popular and cheer captain. She's probably the prettiest girl in school and she'll use her father's wealth to ensure whatever future she wants. She gets guys to do her homework so she can maintain her flawless skin and from what I've heard, she gets around and not just with her many, many boyfriends. And as far as being girly is concerned, no one is more of a stereotypical girl than she is considering she wears pink all the time and takes care of her nails like some guys do with their cars. She cares about the way she looks more than anything else and how she's presented to society. She's every teenage boy's fantasy."_

"Turn it off Tuck!" Sam screamed as she realized what she was listening to. "I don't need to hear this again!"

"But you do need to hear what comes next since I'm considering you didn't stick around much longer, huh?" Tucker accused as his voice spoke a few words to Danny over the recording, in which Sam immediately shut her yap and turned her head, refusing to look at either one of them as he caught her red-handed.

 _"And what about Sam?"_

 _"Sam…"_

"Tucker, I don't—"

"Shush," was all Tucker had to say to quiet Danny from interrupting. He'd originally planned on 'accidentally' playing this during their visit into the Ghost Zone later that week when Danny would have nowhere to run and hide and Sam would be trapped inside the speeder with him or, if Tucker had had his way, in Danny's arms as he flew a safe distance from them using a jetpack.

 _"Sam may not be Ms. Popular, but she doesn't need to be worshiped to feel good about herself. She's stronger than that and proud of herself. Though Paulina is pretty, Sam is beautiful and gorgeous and dazzling and a thousand more adjectives on top of that. And unlike Paulina, Sam's beauty isn't fake; she doesn't spend hours in the morning trying to achieve it. In fact, I think she looks her best without any make-up at all._

 _"And even though Sam is rich too, she refuses to sit on the sidelines and let others take care of her. She wants to contribute to society and she wants to define herself. She wants to help others instead of insisting others always take care of her. Sure, she definitely fits the tomboy category but I rather have a girl that can kick ass alongside me than one that shrieks and demands I save her all the time. That gets annoying._

 _"Sam doesn't need anyone's approval either; she knows who she is and she embraces that. She's strong and fierce; somebody I look up to. And when Sam gets a little older, she's going to be every man's fantasy because she's someone who's reliable, trustworthy, and caring. Who wouldn't want to have a family with her? To come home to her? To, well…to love her?"_

 _"Um, me, because she's practically my sister and that would be weird."_

 _"Well, I desperately don't want to be seen as a brother to her. If all goes right, I'd like to one day tell people she's my girlfriend. Maybe even my fiancée and then my wife."_ Tucker cut off the feed after that, though the conversation had continued with Tucker teasing Danny about his slow start to achieving these long-term future plans.

Speaking of which, the halfa's face was red with anger at Tuck for breaching the guy code, sharing embarrassment from Sam's slack-jaw stare piercing through his very mind. Deciding something needed to be said before Tucker saw something he could never un-see, i.e. the lovebirds lunging at one another at the burst of their sexual tension (he hoped, because the alternative was the duo lunging at him with painful consequences), he clapped his hands together in a startling boom and informed, "I'm going to go tell your parents, our parents, and the doctor downstairs that you are up. I will then inform them that Danny is trying to get you to talk or whatever, thus supplying you with probably a half hour tops."

After Tucker closed the door to Sam's room and began his slow decent down to the others, Sam couldn't help but feel guilty for her childish behavior. She shouldn't have doubted their friendship and believed her inner nightmares that Danny would so bluntly bag on her in Tucker's presence. Since when had Danny ever spoken ill of her, not including rash throw-backs in arguments? And to be so immature as to risk her good health and life? And Danny, well, the ball was in Sam's court now and he really hoped he hadn't frightened her away. He'd been rambling to Tucker after a while, lost in his own fantasy before he knew it.

Three more minutes went by with them avoiding each other's eyes until Danny couldn't take it and cleared his throat to ask, "I have to know if you had hoped to freeze to death because of what you heard or if this was accidental on your part?"

"I did not willingly attempt suicide, if that's what you're hinting at," Sam quickly assured. "I exhausted myself and then mistakenly fell asleep because I forgot it was a dangerous thing to do on a spring night in Amity. How did you guys end up finding me anyways?"

"Tucker tracked your phone and then I flew ahead of everyone else. You woke up while I was flying you back, do you remember?" Danny calmly asked, relieved his Gothic angel didn't desire to grow her wings and fly away quite yet.

"Not really. I had kind of passed out after I first woke up. The next thing I know I'm waking up here, tucked into bed." Silence had taken over once more after Sam finished her thought, but it was bearing down on her too much to handle so she sputtered, "Do you really think that highly of me?"

"Do you really think that lowly of yourself?" Danny inquired instead, plowing ahead when Sam turned confused eyes his way. "You automatically assumed I couldn't think of you as better than Paulina even though you know I would never say anything bad about anyone—most especially about you to someone else."

"But you've liked Paulina since forever it seems, so was it really that hard for me to think like that?" Sam challenged with a raised brow but blushing cheeks.

"Sam, I haven't liked Paulina in a long time. When's the last time I even talked about her to you and Tuck?" Danny asked with crossed arms as he sat taller in his chair. It seemed his Gothic princess had self-esteem issues. He'd have to work on that with her.

After another silent couple of minutes Sam admitted, "I see your point."

"And," Danny continued with a slight smirk, "when's the last time you cared about what other people thought of you?"

"Since it was you who was doing the talking," Sam quickly answered, eyes widening after she realized what exactly she'd just said. "Or Tucker," she added on as a cop out, only to rephrase, "But especially you," when she noticed the shift in his body language. He had dropped his shoulders and pursed his lips when she'd mentioned Tucker's name, looking almost disheartened. Then, as soon as she confessed that he may mean more to her in some way, he sat much straighter and with the sweetest smile gracing his lips.

They were at an impasse now, but the atmosphere surrounding the two was comfortably silent. The young adults smiled at each other until they heard commotion at the bottom of the stairs. Fearing interruption, Danny had to ask before it was too late, "Why especially me?" He thought he knew the answer. He _hoped_ he knew the answer, but he needed to hear her say it. Heck, he'd already said it so there was no going back, but he didn't want any confusion between them. The moment had come and he would be damned if he let it slip by. Who knew how many more chances they would get before they ran out?

"Um, because," Sam stuttered through her mumbling as she glanced between her temporarily closed bedroom door and Danny's slightly desperate face. Could she really tell him? What would happen if she did? If she didn't? "You mean very much to me Danny, and I…" she could hear the people below quickly ascending the grand staircase. Soon they would be barging into her room and interrupting this tender moment between the two. Sam knew this because it had happened countless times. How many more times would she get?

At the very last second, when Sam heard her doorknob jingle she rushed to confess, "Danny Fenton, I think I'm falling in love with you."

"AHHHH!" came the surprised yelps of those currently bursting through the door as they watched the scene unfold between them.

Pamela, for one, screamed because she'd always feared the day would come when that Fenton boy would realize his feelings for her lovely Sammykins. Then it would all spiral downhill for Sam's chances at dating one of the sons at her woman's club. Although she knew she would grow to accept their relationship, she had hoped Sam would be able to experience what others had to offer her before this day came.

Jeremy, on the other hand, screamed because no father ever wanted to walk in on his daughter making-out with her boyfriend practically laying on top of her. Especially since his daughter was a respectable, high society young lady! This would make denial that much harder as their relationship would eventually advance with time.

Grandma Ida yelped because she found the whole scene hilarious and she quickly descended into a fit of giggles. This is what she'd been waiting for and had, during one late night, wondered if she wouldn't live to see the young, dashing Fenton boy make his move. It reminded her so much of her love with her deceased husband that she felt giddy yet righteous.

The Fenton parents yelped in merriment, having awaited this moment (though not this exact moment) ever since Danny had brought home his new friend in the second grade. They had seen something special between the two with how the little kids had treated and acted around each other. It was something they couldn't quite put their fingers on until much later in their children's lives, when Danny had just finished eighth grade and still seemed to plan his life around the newly Gothic Sam's schedule.

The Foley parents screamed because they found it rather embarrassing to walk in on such an intimate moment between the two young lovers. It was marvelous the two were finally opening up about their feelings, but neither wanted to see their son's best friends in such compromising positions.

Tucker yelled because he hadn't actually thought watching his best friends make out would be so _weird_. This is something he did not need to see, thank you very much. But alas, since he was subjected to this horror he decided he might as well take picture even as he covered his eyes with his free hand. This would definitely be going into their wedding night scrapbook.

The doctor yelled simply because when all the others yelped he'd jumped back in surprise and bumped his funny bone against the entrance way. Ouch!

When the two lovebirds released one another to breathe, Danny practically melted in the loving caress of Sam's amethyst eyes staring deep into his very own icy blue pools. He didn't care what anybody had seen or what her parents would subject him too. He didn't care that he'd probably receive a very humiliating talk from both his dad and probably Tucker's dad too. Everything felt right in his world, for once. "No one will ever compare to you," Danny whispered into the momentary silence, caught in the moment without a will to escape.

Smiling with all her heart, Sam couldn't imagine herself feeling any better than she did now.


End file.
